Sources
Information
As always, old newspapers from the New York City area provided much information for this edition of Hixtory. In addition, the broad coverage of the races also led me to old newspapers from far-flung places.
Of special note is the 1904 race map from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. As far as I know, it is the ONLY published map found online which accurately shows that the race course ran along Broadway - other maps have drawn the course running south along Jerusalem Avenue!
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Howard Kroplick's comprehensive website at www.vanderbiltcupraces.com proved invaluable for helping me piece together the many disparate - and sometimes conflicting - news reports which I found elsewhere, and also for filling in some otherwise unfillable gaps. Note that within the website, one can search for specific topics, including Hicksville.
Mr. Kroplick also is the author of a book filled with great information about both Willie K and the races: Vanderbilt Cup Races of Long Island, published as part of the Images of Sports series by Acadia Publishing.
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A fascinating set of 260 images of the 1904 event exists online in the Digital Collections of the Detroit Public Library. To browse through them, search for 1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race on the website at https://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/https://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/ And yes, one also can search for images of other years' races.
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The factual information in this article about Michael Caruso comes primarily from Brian Caruso's excellent Caruso Racing Museum website, which also is credited as the source of two of the photographs used above. It can be found at www.carusomidgetracing.com
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Images
Again as always with Ancient Hixtory, almost all the images included in this article have been digitally modified for various reasons (improved contrast, file size considerations, and the "removal" of the most egregious of the defects, such as dust, stains, tears, etc.). No attempt was made to change the purport of the images.
An extreme case was the photo of driver Herbert Lytle and his mechanician, sitting in the Pope-Toledo, which appears at the start of this article. It is a composite of images from two damaged prints in the Detroit Public Library collection which was mentioned above: C14,751 and C14,797 of the Nathan Lazarnick Collection.
Here are the original images, followed by the combined / edited result:
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That's all for now; more racing to follow in April!
